Thursday, May 20, 2010

The land of milk and honey...for real


Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
- Buddha

As a result of a long-ago-agreed-to social commitment, Lone and I left the young people in charge of the farm for three days last week. We delivered piglets on Thursday, took care of sundry tasks in São Paulo on Friday and headed to Fazenda Pau d'Alho in Tietê to attend the pre-auction party at Carson and Ellen's that same evening. Post party we stayed at the uniquely orange Robusti Plazza Hotel, from which we returned to Fazenda Pau d'Alho on Saturday morning to participate in the Novilha do Futuro 2010 auction. The weather was glorious, and while I did not bid on any cattle, I did have the opportunity to finalize the purchase of four more Jersey cattle with Roberto V. Lopez, Carson's long-time veterinarian. We also got to spend a little time with São Paulo State's handsomest jurist and gentleman farmer, Márcio Magano.

Before leaving for São Paulo, we lost a sow…to what I have no idea. We heard her crying and found her basically immobile with a swollen, rock-hard stomach…and then she died. While sad, we have been quite fortunate, having only lost this one sow to illness (Flora was put down due to a damaged hip) since we began hog farming in early 2009. Depending on how one counts, that makes one-two sows in two years, equivalent to a mortality rate of 1.25-2.50%.

Thanks to Anella and Sandra's initiative, the horses are being ridden again. In fact, only Castanha is being ridden, as the others are so old they are merely passing time before they meet their maker. Our good friend Leonardo has kindly offered to replenish Fazenda Alfheim's equestrian stock in the next month or so. As important as the horses being ridden was the work the girls did cleaning up the saddles, bridles etc.

Phase II in Lone's war on the ants was implemented with typical military efficiency on Tuesday afternoon when we moved the hogs from pasture 3, where they have finished clearing all of the grass, to Lone's one hectare vegetable garden. With one exception, the hogs, after a morning without feed, charged enthusiastically into their new, verdant paradise. The slacker in question was quickly corralled, and we were about to call it a day when the truck transporting the four new Jerseys arrived. After a bit of work, we got all of the cattle into pasture 4, where Mausolus quickly assumed command for their well-being.

Two of the Jerseys are lactating, so on Wednesday morning, Lone and Rosana, with direction from Dirlei, milked them. 18 liters in the morning and another eight liters in the afternoon! Clearly we cannot consume that volume of milk daily, even if Lone begins making cheese, so in the short term the piglets will be the beneficiaries of the fattest, best-tasting milk in the world. The rule of thumb is that while it takes nine liters of milk to produce one kg of cheese, it only takes four and one-half liters of Jersey milk to produce the same. As for the taste, I can personally attest, having drunken it warm and raw, that it is ridiculously yummy. Sweet and consistent…a real treat!

In the afternoon, before the day's second milking, we gave the new Jerseys the once over: ear marked them, checked for parasites etc. With the exception of one swollen front leg, they all looked good. And like their two predecessors, Ressurrection Arabula and Rosa Iatolá, they possess a particularly sweet disposition.

Finally, Abilio has almost completed the new floor in what we hope will be Dirlei's house and the results are excellent (7-9-13 that this solves the humidity mystery), Lone finished reading her first Kindle book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson), Mark has been taking a bit of a break this week from manual labor while he nurses a slightly sore back and this week's fauna is, you guessed it, another breathtaking moth.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Productivity boost

Written to Fabulous Flamenco/La Gitarra Flamenca by Paco Peña

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
- Thomas Szasz

Last week’s blog post was read by 126 people, the third highest weekly total ever. On the one hand I am delighted by the high level of interest, but on the other I cannot help but wonder if there isn’t a correlation between this enhanced interest and my (almost) being eaten alive by a corybantic swine mother. Probably better not to ponder...

On May 1st Lone and I picked up the Danes, Anella and Sandra Jørgensen, at São Paulo/Guarulhos – Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport, a day after celebrating my birthday, actually both of our birthdays, with a lovely day in São Paulo (an oxymoron?), including dinner at Churrascaria Rodeio, one of our favorite restaurants. With the addition of Anella and Sandra, our workforce has suddenly ballooned to nine (including the proprietors, of course), and the results quickly followed. In what ended as a mere three and one-half day work week, we managed to:
  • Prepare Lone’s local, ladies-only, birthday bash. A couple of weeks back, Lone had sent out invitations to all of her female friends and acquaintences from Greater Vargem Grande to coffee, tea and cakes to celebrate her aniversário. Before Lone and I departed for our São Paulo sojourn, Lone pre-prepped a colossal chocolate cake and a slew of lemon cupcakes and stored them in the freezer. When we arrived from the airport, Anella, Sandra, Mark and I helped Lone tie up all of the loose ends: dipping strawberries in chocolate (it was a brutal job, but someone (me) had to do it), making coffee, tea, setting the table etc. -even feeding the hogs.
  • Give the girls a Sunday tour of Fazenda Alfheim, focusing primarily on Hog Hill, the vegetation of which has regrown to such an extent since we removed the hogs on March 1st that we will have to bring them back for a couple of weeks prior to planting corn there in July. If everything goes according to plan, I will purchase a disk plow (arado de disco), a harrow (grade) and maybe even a planter (plantadeira) to help us with soil preparation and planting.
  • Paint the exteriors of both houses, this after numerous false starts by the aforementioned proprietors -and their full-time workers. (Almost) all credit for this accomplishment goes to Anella and Mark. They painted the exterior and the foundation of our house on Monday, and ditto for Clair and Rosana’s house on Tuesday, even squeezing in time on Tuesday morning to help Rosana paint her kitchen. The energy of youth is a beautiful thing!
  • Paint (virtually) the entire exterior of the storage room/apartment complex (on Wednesday)
  • Clean up the bamboo shed where the surplus building materials share space with the three numb-nuts (read: our dogs). Sandra was both the brains and the brawn behind this feat.
  • Break up and remove the entire floor in the third house in order to try and (re)solve the mystery of the damp concrete floor. For this task we had the aid of Abilio, a local handyman, who finally completed his previous gig and was thus freed up to work at Alfheim. We had to wait almost four weeks to contract his services…some things never change, whether in the city or the countryside. Abilio suggested we add Vedacit to the new concrete to lock the moisture out. Interestingly, after they had broken up and removed the previous floor, spreading it judiciously on Alfheim's entry road, we could find no evidence of humidity or moisture anywhere. Go figure.
  • Obtain 25-30 liters of whey per day from our cheese-producing neighbors, João Jipe (roughly translated: John the Jeep) and Isilda. We will soak our organic corn in the whey and feed it to both the hogs and the piglets. This represents a MASSIVE nutritional upgrade for the larger swine.
  • Dig up four different ant nests inside of Lone’s one hectare vegetable garden. In other words, Lone's May Ant War has officially begun. The head Witch of Eastwick has taken off the gloves!
  • Distribute the final 40-odd fence posts in what over the next three weeks will become our newest hog pen, henceforth to be known as Hog Weald.
  • Treat all of the Topigs and the 3 Chiquinas, Betty and Beta Boar for parasites. Chiquina is definitely PREGNANT!
We completed all of these tasks, in addition to our normal fazenda workload, before 11:00 on Thursday morning, when the five of us piled into our Ford Ecosport 4WD 2.0 16v and headed to Campos do Jordão for some well-deserved R&R at our friend's (Paula Afrange) gorgeous mountain retreat. We arrived in the late afternoon after a quick stop in Taubaté to get the car lights fixed (a burned out relay), enjoy a pastel or three and shop at the Mercado Municipal. After settling in at Paula's, we ended the day gazing at this gudsbenået solnedgang!

Finally, the fuana of the week is once again a moth…I am running out of adjectives.